Maybe I'm being cynical here, but after all that nonsense about fabricated signs and photo images in Europe during the "Mohammed cartoon" controversy a few years ago, I wonder if something like that image has been staged by the media.
they know who is capable of offering substantial help ... more people in the world know english than we know foreign languages here
English literacy is pretty high there. I lived there for eight years and didn’t really need to read much Kanji. They actually do use a Latinate script called Romaji (thank heaven, or I’d have been lost in a hundred rural train stations!)
SOS and HELP are pretty much universally recognized across all languages. Logic would say that in an event like that, you would want to write something that is recognized by aid workers from around the world.
English is taught as a mandatory second language in Japan.......There are more Japanese in Japan who know how to speak proper English than in our own Democrat controlled inner city schools.........